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So It Snowed. It's Cold. What's the Fuss, Wimp?

MAYBE it's because your average suburbanite, hard by a cul-de-sac or a Fresh Fields, lives such an insulated life, cozy in a thermo-paned, centrally heated home. Who knows? But the prospect of snow -- any amount -- turns local newscasters into shrieking Cassandras and brings school systems to a halt.

Maybe it's emblematic of a society in which the closest that many people come to adventure are Jeep Grand Cherokee commercials.

Or maybe it's just the improvement of snow forecasting and the presence of Doppler radar equipment at every television and radio station between here and High Point. Whatever the cause, this is a culture that whips itself into a frenzy at the sight of the first flake -- heck, the first mention -- of snow.

''I grew up in New Hampshire, where we had snow all winter,'' said Beth Mead, a mother of three who now lives in Glen Ridge. ''Sometimes it started in October, and we had blizzards at Easter.''

In all fairness, New Jersey did get sucker punched by a Northeaster a couple weeks ago that delivered up to 15 inches of snow in the west, though far less elsewhere in the state. And that snow -- freeze-dried by temperatures in the single digits and wind chills below zero -- was embellished on Super Bowl Sunday by a slushy mix of snow, sleet and rain.

Still, you don't have to be a transplant from New Hampshire to notice the level of flakiness over every snowstorm. Even in Glen Ridge, where Dave Vesterman grew up in the 1960's and 70's, winter snowstorms didn't bring the world to a halt. Nor did parents haul their offspring to school in a car.

''Back then,'' says Mr. Vesterman, now a crossing guard in his hometown, ''parents used to say, 'You have two legs, two feet, ten toes. Use them.' More kids walked then.''

Of course, the snow was deeper and the children were tougher then. Even Laura Ingalls Wilder probably got lectures about how much harder her parents had it before they moved to that cushy Little House in the Big Woods.

''I know there's a temptation when you reach maturity to say, 'When I was your age I used to walk 10 miles through the blizzards','' said Michael Aaron Rockland, chairman of the American studies department at Rutgers University who wrote, ''Snowshoeing through Sewers'' (Rutgers University Press, $21.95). ''We remember snows of our youth as much higher, but that's because we were very short.''

Still, it doesn't take a very long memory to recall when people seemed to be made of tougher stuff. Dr. Rockland recalled the first day of classes in 1994, when New Jersey was a sheet of ice, and Rutgers made the decision to stay open.

It took Dr. Rockland, who lives in Morristown, three hours to get to work that day. ''We didn't close,'' he said. ''And we were damn proud of it. Call it rugged individualism if you like, I think it makes this country great.''

But two weeks ago, like school districts all over the state, Rutgers called off classes. ''It has a lot to do with American having become a more and more litigious society,'' Dr. Rockland said. ''And the insurance companies run our lives.''

On the other hand, it wouldn't be fair to blame the lawyers and the underwriters and not point a chapped finger at the cable and local news shows, which swoon in ecstasy at each winter weather advisory. How many episodes of ''ER'' have been ruined by predictions of precipitation that seem to take forever to crawl across the screen?

What could be more telling than the fact that David Robinson, the state climatologist, gave 363 press interviews last year?

''Last month, I gave 90 interviews,'' Dr. Robinson said. ''In the beginning of the month, it was about how warm it was. And then came the cold. And then came the snow.''

On Jan. 25, the day of the surprise storm, Dr. Robinson fielded calls from 15 reporters. A pretty typical day, as far as it goes, in the winter world of climatology.

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''I worked,'' he said. ''I shoveled. I got out on my cross-country skis a couple of times. I talked to reporters.''

Of course, there are actually some good reasons for people to be more fearful on snowy roads these days -- despite the preponderance of sport utility vehicles with four-wheel drive.

James Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, pointed out that there have been 450,000 jobs created in the state since 1992, putting that many more cars on the roads during the morning and evening rush. School enrollment is also higher, so there are more teenagers driving to school. And then there are all those United Parcel Service trucks delivering all those goods ordered on the Internet.

''The intensity of traffic on the roads makes it worse than it was 20 years ago,'' Dr. Hughes said. ''And we do drive longer distances.''

Add to that the fact that people's snow-driving skills may have gotten a little rusty after two particularly mild winters. ''There is a learning curve. It's amazing how quickly we recover. It gets to be a crummy routine, but it's a routine nonetheless.'

Frank Lach, for instance, who owns Criger's Auto Body in Fairfield, spent the day of the storm dispatching drivers to drag four-wheel drive vehicles out of ditches.

Mr. Lach, who for years watched his father work behind the wheel of a tow truck, thinks there has been a deterioration of driving skills, which won't be turned around by one or two storms. There are people who never learned to take their foot off the brake and turn in the direction of a skid, for example. ''They don't know how to drive,'' he said. ''A lot of people don't even know how to use their four-wheel drives.''

Of course, snow means business for people like Mr. Lach, and for the purveyors of road salt, snow shovels and other accouterments of cold weather. Eardly T. Peterson, who sells snow blowers and other power machines in Westfield, says that he has finally unloaded those snow blowers that have been sitting in his inventory collecting dust for the past two years.

So would somebody please call Jon Krakauer, the guy who climbed Mount Everest during that disastrous 1996 expedition that took eight lives, and survived to write the best-selling account, ''Into Thin Air'' (Anchor Books, $7.99).

After all, New Brunswick received 11.8 inches of snow in New Jersey in January. If that doesn't qualify as serious outdoor adventure, what does?

Mr. Krakauer could write about all the terrifying moments of Tuesday, Jan. 25 -- when the snowstorm somehow evaded the attention of the meteorologists and dropped 6 inches to 8 inches of snow in Newark, cancelling school pretty much everywhere across the state. He could interview Michele Rawson, the communications chairwoman for Central School in Warren, who could not reach one of the class mothers on her snow chain list at 5:30 a.m., and left five fairly frantic messages before finding out the woman was actually in Florida.

Mr. Krakauer could even write about heroic souls who braved the snow that day to get to the video store. And who knows? If he stayed a week or two, maybe he'd get to see another death-defying dusting.

Before Ice Was a Nuisance, It Was a Crop

FOR the first time in four years the ice was thick enough to harvest. Third graders from the Woodcrest Elementary School in Cherry Hill had come to the Howell Living History Farm, just south of Lambertville, to watch.

The farm, run by the Mercer County Parks Department, recreates life on a turn-of-the-century farm, where ice was vital in the days before refrigeration.

Pam Flory and Tevis Stites-Robertson used saws to cut blocks and used pikes to pull them from the pond onto tracks leading to the ice house. About 70 percent of the stored ice would survive the year.